


Don't Touch

by theLiterator



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Stripper/Exotic Dancer, Ballet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:47:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7963033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick Grayson was having a perfectly normal life taking off his clothes for strangers before Damian started to show up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Touch

The first time Dick gave the kid a private dance, he’s already been sort-of-aware of him for a couple of months: he comes in on weeknights, mostly, and sips on a single coke while paying more attention to his phone than the dancers. 

He tipped well, though: ten- and twenty-dollar bills folded carefully lengthwise and slipped in against Dick’s skin without even a hint of fingertips brushing his skin, and it was almost the fact that he _wasn’t_ a handsy asshole that made him memorable.

Well, that and the non-alcoholic drinks.

“You ever done this before?” Dick asked. The music was less deafening in the little alcove at the back of the bar, and he offered a more-or-less genuine smile to the kid who shrugged.

“It’s not as if it’s _my _skill on display,” he snapped. “Why should it matter?”__

__“‘Because, there’s rules” Dick replied, not letting his smile fade even though he was suddenly overcome with the desire to smack the kid upside the head, twenty-dollar bills in his g-string be damned._ _

__“I know that,” the kid said. “No touching, no kissing, and pay for what you look at.”_ _

__The kid settled back into the chair with all the air of visiting royalty, crossing his arms over his chest and _glared_._ _

__Dick sighed and dropped the stupid fake grin since he’d never been any good at it anyway and dropped down so he was sitting at the edge of the table. “Problem is,” he said after a second. “I can’t read you.”_ _

__The kid’s eyebrow crept up and he looked incredibly confused for several seconds before his expression shuttered blank, as if wiped entirely clean from the inside out._ _

__“You don’t need to ‘read me’,” he said. “You just need to -- “ he gestured a little. “Bend. Look pretty. Amuse me.”_ _

__“See, that’s it right there. I never know if I’m ‘amusing’ you, and I just want--”_ _

__Dick shrugged helplessly._ _

__The kid bit his lip and he looked really appealing like that, soft confusion, wide blue eyes in a tanned face; he could probably pull better tips than Dick, if you put him up on a stage._ _

__“Isn’t that why I tip you?”_ _

__Dick snorted. “Kid--”_ _

__“Damian,” he was interrupted. “I’m an adult.”_ _

__“Sure thing, _Damian_ ,” Dick said, because that was one hell of a pseudonym. Who the hell came up with ‘Damian’ when they were trying to decide what to tell strippers their name was? “Damian, you realize you’re supposed to tip _all_ of us?”_ _

__“Ye-es,” Damian replied slowly. “But I asked _you_ for… this.”_ _

__Dick sighed again, and then when the song turned over, he got back up on his table._ _

__Granted, having kind of a cold fish for an audience was really, really low on the totem pole of problems he could face in a given night._ _

__Afterwards, Damian left before Dick had finished picking all of his stuff up off the table, and he’d left behind him a single hundred dollar bill, folded lengthwise._ _

__Dick stared at it askance, pretty sure he’d done literally nothing worth that kind of cash-- this wasn’t one of the nicer clubs up near the financial district, where they had an actual Champagne Lounge and you could make 1200$ in an hour; this was the seedier end of Crime Alley and…_ _

__Oh. Kid was probably mob, just out on his own, trying to make himself look good for the rest of the family._ _

__It made as much sense as anything, and Dick made a note to pay attention to him going forward. Tips like that would make or break his rent bill, after all._ _

__***_ _

__Damian kept coming in after that, pretty regularly, and he always tipped Dick exorbitantly, and he always drank his soda and checked his phone while waiting at the rail for Dick to come out._ _

__Until one time he didn’t, and security had to drag Dick over to the bar where Damian was staring with focused intensity at a line of vegas bombs on the bar._ _

__“Hey you,” Dick said, insinuating himself between Damian and some guy who was yelling “SHOTS” at the top of his lungs._ _

__“Oh,” Damian said, blinking his ridiculous eyes down at Dick, and Dick shouldn’t have been so surprised to find out that the kid was taller than him, but it did come as a little shock, a thrill that traced its way down Dick’s spine and centered deep in his guts and damned if he hadn’t felt that sort of surging lust in _years_ at least._ _

__Inconvenient that it was with a customer; less awful than if he hadn’t been a completely tame regular, but still._ _

__“Can we get a tray, please?” Dick asked Mary, and she started deftly transferring the shotglasses and highballs to a sticky tray, giving him relieved stares and then shooing him with her eyes._ _

__“C’mon,” Dick told Damian, and once they got to one of the little alcoves, and Dick set out the shot for him, Damian dropped the schnapps into the red bull and knocked it back like a pro._ _

__He looked like he was ready to get into a fist fight at the least provocation, a grim line to his shoulders that Dick didn’t really recognize on him. He took the next shot himself._ _

__“What’s wrong?” Dick asked, holding back the glasses._ _

__Damian snarled soundlessly, but then he shrugged. “I want a dance,” he said, pulling out his wallet clumsily and spilling bills all over the floor._ _

__Dick bent to help him pick them back up, and was surprised when Damian just laid them all out on the table, large denominations and small, and started creasing each of them in half lengthwise._ _

__“My mother,” Damian said after a long, silent minute, during which he started going back through the bills and folding them lengthwise again._ _

__Dick set up another shot for him, and Damian sent him a grateful look from under his lashes before downing it._ _

__“Oh, it’s not as if _you_ care,” he snapped, and Dick opened his mouth to protest that, because he found that he kind of totally _did_ care if his cold fish regular was having personal problems that had driven him to drinking. “She’s disowned me,” he announced, and started back in on the bills again, until they were all perfectly aligned and creased._ _

__“Oh,” Dick said. “I’m sorry about that. Sucks.” He felt completely incapable of dealing with that sort of thing, not the least because: “My mom died when I was eight. Both of my parents.”_ _

__The kid looked at him directly, and snaked an arm around behind Dick in a dextrous display that he probably shouldn’t actually be able to manage with three shots (at least) in him; especially with how he’d dropped his money, early._ _

__He dropped the shotglass into the red bull and handed it to Dick and said, seriously. “You’re meant to ‘chug’ it.”_ _

__Damian never did say anything else about his mother, but Dick ended up telling him everything about his own parents; about the circus, the fire, the _loneliness_ , and when they called last call, Dick carefully put the spaghetti-mess of the neatly folded bills back into Damian’s wallet before pouring him into a cab._ _

__He’d paid Dick more than enough over the last year to get away with a drunken freebie, he figured, even if Security teased him all the way to his apartment about having a crush._ _

__So what if he had a crush? The kid had been disowned; he’d probably never see him again, and Dick had plenty of other customers to keep happy to dwell on it._ _

__***_ _

__The Wayne Foundation for the Arts event wasn’t really Dick’s scene, except in that he was supposed to be their poster child. Risen from a life of poverty and an old ballet studio in Crime Alley to become one of the Gotham City Ballet Corps premier dancers! Clearly, he was exactly the sort of charity “success” case the Foundation wanted to show off; and since the Foundation kept his ballet troupe alive, he owed it at least this one little appearance._ _

__Without ballet--_ _

__When he’d first been dropped into Gotham’s abysmal child services system, he’d been so lonely and confused, and he’d been shuffled through four different group homes before his first foster home had taught him that the group homes, for all they were cold and crowded and hungry, were definitely the better option._ _

__Grieving for his parents and the life of the circus brat he’d lost, he’d accidentally made his way to one of the Wayne FOundation for the Arts after school programs and discovered that a talent for the trapeze meant his body was also perfectly prepared for the rigors of ballet, and he’d quickly learned everything they had to offer him, becoming the star of the children’s troupe and getting a scholarship to the Gotham Institute of Dance at 16, effectively dragging him out of the system and into a world of like minded individuals his own age._ _

__The dream had been too good to be true, of course: the Gotham City Ballet couldn’t afford to pay any of them a living wage, and so, he’d figured out another way to make his dancing pay the bills._ _

__He was almost 100% certain that this was not what his parents would have wanted for him, but like he’d told Damian a few nights ago: if they’d wanted any say in his life, they shouldn’t have fucking _died_ on him._ _

__There’s a brief performance: the grand reveal of Giselle, only he’s not used to working with Giselle’s understudy and he wrenches his shoulder in a lift that he should have been able to do in his sleep._ _

__He’s shed 90% of his costume and grabbed a handful of hors d'oeuvres to eat while hiding in a corner, when suddenly a solid weight _slams_ into him, knocking his shoulder into the wall and making him cringe and curl in on himself._ _

__“ _What_ do you think you’re doing, you imbecile!” a strangely familiar voice demands in strident tones as the person is hauled bodily away from him. “Did you just pick my pocket?” he adds loudly._ _

__Dick reaches up for his shoulder and stares as Damian-- wearing an actual tuxedo and not his usual jeans and turtleneck, because of course he’s wearing a tux, this is a black tie event, starts frisking the waiter who’d run into Dick._ _

__Damian pulls his wallet out of the waiter’s pocket triumphantly and pulls out three neatly folded bills that are barely a quarter inch wide to hand to the waiter and then looks up and catches Dick’s eyes._ _

__“Oh, shit,” Dick says aloud. He’s never wanted to find a better club with better tips in all his ‘career’ because he never wanted to be recognized by the stupid self-important rich people who go to the Gotham Ballet, and…_ _

__“Come with me,” Damian says, and he grabs Dick’s uninjured arm and hauls him away._ _

__“Father!” the kid demands in whining tones that grab the attention of half the room, and really, Dick had just wanted to eat his gross crackers with salty fish jizz in peace, not … not _this_._ _

__“Father, watch him,” Damian says more quietly, and suddenly Dick is face to face with Bruce Motherfucking Wayne, who smiles politely at him and blinks a couple of times._ _

__“So,” Bruce Wayne says. “You’re a dancer?”_ _

__“Ah, yes sir. I uh, the uh Wayne Foundation Arts Scholarship, it uh, enabled me to--” he didn’t really _want_ to lie to Bruce Wayne, but it wasn’t like he could know--_ _

__“I have a question,” Damian announced from behind Dick, and he turns to see that Damian has the wrist of the director of the the GCBC board’s wrist in a white-knuckled grip. “How much would you say you pay your premier danseur? Per annum. An estimate, if you can’t be sure.”_ _

__“Damian--” Bruce Wayne says, sounding curious and not quelling._ _

__“Eight--”_ _

__Dick feels his eyebrows raise despite his desire to remain completely apart from the scene._ _

__“Four hundred dollars a week?” the man whispers, like it’s a question._ _

__It’s not. Dick’s check was for $386.74 last week, before the federal government had demanded their cut._ _

__“How many weeks would you say you work per year, Grayson?” Damian demands._ _

__“I-- uh… I think last year I worked 32 weeks. At the ballet, I mean.”_ _

__Damian nods, and then he twists his arm and the man collapses to the ground. Dick probably shouldn’t find that so incredibly hot. Especially not in a client. _Especially_ not in a billionaire._ _

__“Damian,” Bruce Wayne repeats, and the kid scoffs and stares at his father._ _

__“This is a perversion of your parents intentions.”_ _

__“I can see that.”_ _

__“If this were my mother’s country--”_ _

__“It’s not,” Bruce interrupts._ _

__“He would lose his _hands_ for _daring_ to steal from us!” Damian concludes, ignoring the interruption._ _

__The director stays on the floor, rather wisely in Dick’s opinion._ _

__“Damian, we will figure this out,” Bruce says, his hand resting warm and paternal on Dick’s shoulder. “But not. Right. Now.”_ _

__Damian shot him a look of purest loathing, and then he seized Dick’s wrist again and dragged him outside._ _

__“You never said you were a _danseur_ ,” Damian snaps._ _

__Dick shrugs, and then winces and rubs his shoulder more. “You never said you were a billionaire.”_ _

__Damian scoffs and turns away from Dick. “It never mattered,” he says._ _

__“Uh-huh. I hope you realize that giving me a raise isn’t going to make me sleep with you.”_ _

__Damian whirls back to face him, indignant. “I don’t-- I didn’t--”_ _

__Dick laughs and he indulges his desire to stand on his toes to kiss Damian, who gapes at him and makes it all a very uncomfortable kiss._ _

__But then everything about Damian has been uncomfortable until now, so why should this be any different?_ _

__Dick pulls back. “You’re supposed to kiss me back, you know.”_ _

__“No I’m not,” Damian replies. “It’s against the rules.” But he leans in and carefully kisses Dick anyway, and Dick smiles into it._ _


End file.
